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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

BLACKWATER REVELATIONS

If anyone missed the latest Bill Maher show on HBO I highly recommend it. If you can call it up on your TV or get it on the computer somehow, do it. Here's a piece of it that was on Huffington Post yesterday.

7 comments:

Remember the bad old George W. days, when we killed lots of Islamists in Iraq and Afghanistan and fed excessive amounts of water to misguided Al Qaida folks like Khalid Sheik Mohammed who masterminded 9/11. The CIA operatives who took him from Pakistan neglected to read him his Miranda rights. Europeans and Middle East folks demonstrated against us while their governments supported US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we are in the New Age of Obama, and those same governments are withdrawing their support from even the “Good War” of Afghanistan, Kim Jung Il fired off missiles in our general direction and threatened our allies; Gordon Brown PM of Britain negotiated with Qadaffi and released the Lockerbie murderer, supposedly after Obama urged him not to. The killer was greeted with a celebration in Libya even after Obama told the Libyans that the killer must be jailed. Obama offered to negotiate directly with Iran and in response they kill their own people and Obama still indicates he is willing to negotiate with them.

I pine for the days when US allies respected our wishes and our enemies feared

No, that's the scene that got so much attention. It doesn't show the whole discussion, which must be somewhere on the net, maybe Maher's show has a site. But it gives you the flavor of this guy who wrote the Blackwater expose not backing down on his criticism of the media's pussyfooting around the high crimes committed by the last administration, not least of which was contracting out to Blackwater assassinations and much of the Iraq war etc.

Cheney, a Voice of Reason on National Security and Enhanced Interrogation

"The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks."

Michael -- I’ve read Scahill’s book on Blackwater (now Xe) and it seemed a trifle unfinished, but considering that most of his research was from public sources, it certainly is a first step. Blackwater, and other military contractors of this type, is reminiscent of Bill Casey’s off-the-shelf proposal when he was head of the CIA and that was the privatization of the intelligence/ covert ops for the ultimate in deniability. Agee’s CIA Diary showed how easily it could be accomplished using proprietary cutouts. Scahill’s book left a lot to the imagination and if you’re paranoid, and no reason why you shouldn’t be, or pitching a screenplay then you can run various scenarios as to the extra legal use of mercenary contractors. Blackwater’s use in New Orleans after Katrina was quite disturbing. The privatization of police forces that only answers to the bottom line can only bode ill (pardon the understatement) for human rights. And there’s no reason to think that these services have not been made available to private entities (read corporations) for security purposes as well as black ops. Blackwater is not the only contractor in this game either. They’re actually Johnny-come-latelys. Steve Fainaru’s book, Big Boy Rules, shows another side of the mercenary biz, and how Blackwater is hated by other contractors and former employees for their arrogance and money grubbing. The assassination teams idea was probably something thought up in Xe’s plans division as they do have to keep the ideas rolling if they’re gonna get paid and a plausible plan was laid out (resources, etc.) and with board approval it went to the sales division which brought it to their CIA contact who passed it on to their plans division who gave it a looksee and maybe under pressure from the VP gave it closer consideration than it normally would get but it needed to be vetted by the lawyers who probably saw that it posed political as well as moral dilemmas. Also agency pros would not have looked kindly on outsiders coming in and claiming that they could do the job better. But in the big picture these guys are just tools, warlords for want of a better term, sanctioned and sanctified by our culture of violence and easy money. I think Frontline had a series on Black Money that spoke to the powers that can trump legit governments (like Great Britain). No shots were fired (that we know of).

It must really piss off the loony left, that Darth Vader was absolutely right about the fact,confirmed in Monday's release of documents, that enhanced interrogation extracted valuable information from terrorists and saved American lives. It is nice to hear some truth in these strange times. We have had terrible administrations before. Buchanan, Wilson, Carter and Nixon come to mind. However this is the first time in history, that we have had an administration that is actually anti-American. We know this is so, not only because of their actions in attacking our intelligence agencies, but because of the friendship and common philosophy that is expressed by American enemies, Castro and Chavez.

Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.

CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.